Self-compassion and grit mediated the relation between mindfulness and mind wandering based on cross-sectional survey data

Previous research suggests that mindfulness and mind wandering are opposing constructs. However, little is known about why and how they are negatively related. Through a process-oriented approach, this cross-sectional study tested self-compassion and grit as mediators for the relation between mindfulness and mind wandering. A total of 487 self-identified meditators were recruited from the UK (241 female, 49.49%). Participants reported a mean age of 38.98 years (SD = 10.03), with an average of 2.26 h of meditation practice per week (SD = 4.47). Upon informed consent, the participants completed a self-report questionnaire that assessed the core variables under study. Path analysis indicated that mindfulness was related to self-compassion. Greater self-compassion was, in turn, related to greater grit, which was then related to lower mind wandering. Bootstrapping analysis further indicated that self-compassion and grit as mediators between mindfulness and mind wandering, above and beyond age, gender, hours of meditation, income, and education as covariates. The cross-sectional findings provided initial evidence of mediation by showing that mindfulness and mind wandering were related through self-compassion and grit.


Mindfulness and grit
As discussed earlier, mindfulness-to-meaning theory 20 postulates that by attending to the present moment without judgment, individuals are supported to broaden their awareness to information that may otherwise have gone unnoticed 25 .The broadened, non-judgmental, and present-moment awareness may serve as a foundation for skillful responses, as opposed to habitual patterns of autopilot, reactivity, or dysregulation.As such, mindfulness supports individuals' awareness of conflicting goals and autonomy to prioritize long-term goals over hedonically pleasant activities 26 .This is consistent with the principles of self-determination theory 27 , which identifies autonomy as a fundamental psychological need.
When people are high on non-judgmental awareness and autonomous response to their needs, they may also have greater grit 27 .Duckworth et al. 28 defined grit as people's consistency of interests and perseverance of effort, i.e., the passion and tenacity in pursuing certain goals.Supporting the mindfulness-to-meaning theory [× 20] and self-determination theory 27 , recent studies suggested that mindfulness is associated with grit [29][30][31] .For instance, mindfulness facets including acting with awareness and non-judging were found to predict grit longitudinally 31 .In another study, mindfulness was associated with greater grit among athletes 30 .Specifically, athletes who were more mindful might be better at evaluating their setbacks non-judgmentally and regulating themselves, resulting in greater grit.In addition, gritty people are likely to persevere from setbacks and remain committed to their set goals 32 .As participants of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, university students also reported experiencing greater grit at post-intervention 33 .Therefore, grounded in theories 20,27 and the empirical literature 30,31 , the positive link between mindfulness and grit has been well-established.

Self-compassion, grit, and mind wandering
According to Neff 15 , self-compassion allows individuals to be more understanding of their own setbacks as part of the common humanity in pursuing long-term goals.As such, self-compassion fosters a sense of relatedness to others, another innate psychological need outlined in self-determination theory 27 .Such relatedness and belongingness, according to Deci and Ryan 27 , is central for commitment and sustained motivation in pursuing goals.In addition to relatedness, the tendency to be self-compassionate also lowers self-judgement 34 and the fear of failure 35,36 .Therefore, self-compassion may be crucial for enhancing grit 30 .
Self-compassion is also related to lower mind wandering among mildly to severely depressed individuals 37 .As discussed at the beginning of the introduction, mind wandering refers to thoughts that are unrelated to the task at hand and are independent from an existing stimulus 9 .When people have greater self-compassion, they are more likely to be gentle with themselves and focus on the tasks at hand, rather than wandering off to interfering thoughts such as criticism, rumination, and worries 38 .In Greenberg et al. 's study 37 , self-compassion further protected individuals from the damaging effects of maladaptive mind wandering on depressive symptoms.As such, self-compassion is central to better mental health outcomes, including greater grit, lower mind wandering, and fewer depressive symptoms.

Grit and mind wandering
According to the optimal performance and health model of grit 39 , people's grit, as indexed by their consistency of interests and perseverance of effort, motivates their self-regulation, thereby enhancing their well-being and achievement outcomes.Previous studies have shown that individuals with greater grit are less likely to procrastinate, have better self-regulation, and are more likely to maintain an interest in what they are doing, which allow them to perform better, remain diligent, and have sufficient discipline to achieve their long-term goals [40][41][42] .As such, grit and mind wandering may be inversely related.When people recognize their mind is wandering, a redirection of their thoughts to the present is crucial 43 , such that they can return to their task at hand.Khoo and Yang 44 found that among gritty individuals, inhibitory control increased their resilience to ignore distracting stimuli such as smartphones.More specifically, they were more likely than were less gritty people to actively suppress distractions and remain focused on things that were relevant to their goal.Supporting the optimal performance and health model of grit 39 , the grittier the individual, the greater the ability to retain concentration and perseverance.This may further reduce the likelihood of mind wandering.

The present study
Grounded in existing theories and empirical findings 8,12,27,39 , a conceptual model was developed in Fig. 1.To test the conceptual model, the present study evaluated self-compassion and grit as mediators between mindfulness

Mindfulness
The 39-item Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ 53 ) was used to assess mindfulness on facets consisting of five subscales including observing, acting with awareness, non-judging of inner experience, non-reactivity to inner experience, and describing.Participants rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale from 1 (never or very rarely) to 5 (very often or always true).Sample items included, "I pay attention to sensations, such as the wind in my hair or sun on my face" (observing), "I tell myself that I shouldn't be feeling the way that I'm feeling" (non-judging of inner experience), "I rush through activities without being really attentive to them" (acting with awareness), "I perceive my feelings and emotions without having to react to them" (non-reactivity to inner experience) and "I can easily put my beliefs, opinions and expectations into words" (describing).Negatively worded items were reverse scored.The raw scores were then averaged, such that higher averaged scores indicated greater mindfulness.In this study, the Cronbach's alpha = 0.94 and McDonald's omega = 0.94 for this study.

Self-compassion
The 12-item Self-Compassion Scale Short Form (SCS-SF 54 ) was used to assess self-compassion in participants on 6 subscales including, self-kindness, self-judgment, common humanity, isolation, mindfulness, and overidentification.Sample items included, "when I'm going through a very hard time, I give myself the caring and tenderness I need" (self-kindness), "judgemental about my own flaws" (self-judgment), "I try to see my failings as part of the human condition" (common humanity), "when I fail at something that's important to me, I tend to feel alone in my failure" (isolation), "when something painful happens, I try to take a balanced view of the situation" (mindfulness) and "when I'm feeling down I tend to obsess and fixate on everything that's wrong" (over-identification).Participants rated on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (almost never) to 5 (almost always).Negatively worded items were reverse scored.The raw scores were then averaged, such that higher mean score indicated a greater self-compassion.In this study, the Cronbach's alpha = 0.91 and McDonald's omega = 0.91 for this study.

Grit
The 8-item Short Grit Scale (Grit-S 55 ) was used to assess trait-level perseverance consisting of two subscales: Consistency of Interest and Perseverance of Effort.Participants rated the items on a 5-point scale from 1 (not at all like me) to 5 (very much like me).Sample items included, "I finish whatever I begin" (perseverance of interest) and "Setbacks don't discourage me" (consistency of interest).Negatively worded items were reverse scored.Vol:.( 1234567890

Data analyses
Preliminary analyses including descriptive statistics and correlations were conducted using IBM SPSS Statistics, version 27.Path analysis was then conducted using MPLUS, version 8.3 58 to investigate the hypothesized model, with self-compassion and grit as mediators for the relation between mindfulness and mind wandering.To examine the goodness-of-fit of the model to the data, Comparative fit index (CFI), Tucker-Lewis index (TLI), standardized root mean square residual (SRMR), and root mean squared error of approximation (RMSEA) were applied to assess the model's goodness of fit.According to Kline 59 and MacCallum et al. 51 , CFI and TLI values greater than 0.90 and SRMR and RMSEA values less than 0.10 suggest acceptable fit between the observed data and the hypothesized mediation model, whereas CFI and TLI values greater than 0.95 and SRMR and RMSEA values less than 0.05 suggest good fit between the observed data and the hypothesized mediation model.Bootstrapping was used to evaluate the mediating roles of self-compassion and grit, as this approach yields more precise estimates of the standard errors for the indirect effect compared to alternative approaches 60 .This dataset had no missing data.As the data did not consist of any outliers, all of the data were retained for analyses.

Ethics approval
The present study was approved by ethics committee at The Education University of Hong Kong (REF: 2021-2022-0312) and was conducted in accordance with the ethical standards in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments.

Consent
Prior to the study administration, informed consent was obtained from all participants.

Discussion
Grounded in mindfulness-in-meaning theory 20 , self-determination theory 27 , and the optimal performance and health model of grit 39 , this cross-sectional study indicated self-compassion and grit as partial mediators for the relation between mindfulness and mind wandering, after controlling for the effects of gender, age, hours of meditation per week, income, and education in a sample of meditation practitioners residing in the UK.Consistent with recent findings 8,10,11,61 , the study showed mindfulness and mind wandering as opposing constructs.
The study further adds to the literature 12,26 by showing greater self-compassion and grit as potential underlying mechanisms between mindfulness and mind wandering among meditation practitioners.Although the findings serve as an initial step to identify the cross-sectional relations among the variables under study, future work is necessary to disentangle the bidirectional nature of the associations among mindfulness, self-compassion, grit, and mind wandering.In this study, mindfulness was positively associated with self-compassion among the participating meditators.That is, being mindful of the present moment without judgement is related to people's kindness towards themselves.It is also related to a greater insight that suffering is impermanent, that it is inherent to humanity, and that it interconnects sentient beings 12,15 .Nevertheless, the cross-sectional nature of this study precludes us from drawing conclusions on the directionality of effects between mindfulness and self-compassion.In addition, although mindfulness-to-meaning theory 20 suggests that mindfulness can foster skillful actions and prosocial behavior, the strong correlation between mindfulness and self-compassion (see also 24,34 ) suggested that mindfulness and self-compassion might have co-arisen, potentially as a result of meditation practice 62 as our participants were all meditators.In terms of the model findings, the strong correlation between mindfulness and self-compassion might also have led to multicollinearity.A further examination of the findings, however, revealed that the estimates between mindfulness, self-compassion, and other variables were consistent between the zero-order correlations (see Table 2) and the parameter estimates in the path analysis (see Table 3), thereby ruling out potential statistical artifacts associated with multicollinearity.As theoretically overlapping and distinct concepts, Neff et al. 15,17 argued that mindfulness forms the basis for self-compassion including self-kindness and common humanity.Nevertheless, the 12-item Self-Compassion Scale Short Form (SCS-SF 54 ) included two items of mindfulness (i.e., "When something painful happens I try to take a balanced view of the situation" and "When something upsets me I try to keep my emotions in balance"), which might have accounted for the strong correlation.Future studies should clarify and refine the theoretical nuances between mindfulness and self-compassion, and potentially map the respective measure on each construct.Longitudinal studies and randomized controlled trials are also necessary to further delineate the nuanced processes between meditation, mindfulness, and self-compassion.
Supporting self-determination theory 27 , the presenting findings indicated that mindfulness and self-compassion were positively associated with grit.By being more mindful, people have an increased awareness about their conflicting goals and a greater autonomy to prioritize long-term goals over hedonically pleasant activities (see also 26 ).By being more compassionate, people also have a greater realization that setbacks are part of the common humanity 15 .With a greater relatedness to others' setbacks and experience, they are supported to sustain their motivation and commitment in goal pursuit.They are also less likely to distress over their shortcomings and short-term failures, thereby fostering greater grit 30 .

Variable
(1) Age - (2) Gender (0 = male, 1 = female) 0.053 - www.nature.com/scientificreports/Furthermore, grit was related to a lower level of mind wandering.As such, gritty individuals have better selfregulation 39,42 in ignoring distracting thoughts to achieve long-term goals.Self-compassion was also negatively related to mind wandering.With a higher level of self-compassion, individuals are more likely to be gentle with themselves, rather than being fixated on interfering thoughts such as self-criticisms, ruminations, or worries 63 .This inverse relation corroborated another study 37 , which indicated that self-compassion was related to lower mind wandering among people who were mildly to severely depressed.

Limitations and future directions
The present study must be interpreted in light of several limitations.First of all, the cross-sectional data prevented us from drawing conclusions on the temporal sequence among the variables.Future studies should, therefore, use longitudinal data to disentangle the directionality of effects of the mediation model 64 .Second, the present study used one of the many definitions of mindfulness, i.e., the awareness arising from paying attention to the present moment, on purpose, and without judgment 1 .Nevertheless, this definition was tailored to Western audiences 65 and may not fully capture the breadth and depth of mindfulness.Given that mindfulness has been conceptualized differently by different scholars 38 , its association with the variables under study may vary, depending on the definitions and measures used.As such, the present findings are limited to our operational definition of Table 3. Parameter estimates and standard errors of the path model (N = 487).Participants' education ranged from 1 to 6: 1 = Some high school; 2 = High school/College graduate; 3 = Technical/Vocational training; 4 = Associate degree; 5 = University degree; 6 = Postgraduate degree.Monthly household income ranged from 1 to 12: 1 = £0-5000; 2 = £5001-15,000; 3 = £15,001-25,000; 4 = £25,001-35,000; 5 = £35,001-45,000; 6 = £45,001-55,000; 7 = £55,001-65,000; 8 = £65,001-75,000; 9 = £75,001-85,000; 10 = £85,001-95,000; 11 = £95,001-105,000; 12 = > £105,001.*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.† Participants' hours of meditation per week was ln-transformed to minimize the skewness of the data for analyses.mindfulness 1 and the use of the FFMQ 53 .Similarly, the present study used one of the many definitions of mind wandering, i.e., the engagement with task-unrelated and self-generated and task-unrelated thoughts 9 .However, mind wandering may occur unintentionally or intentionally 66 or spontaneously or deliberately 67 .Therefore, researchers should investigate the nuances between unintentional (spontaneous) and intentional (deliberate) mind wandering and their relations with mindfulness (see also 68 ).Third, we were unable to draw conclusions on the causal effects of mindfulness on self-compassion, grit, and mind wandering.As future directions, researchers could conduct experimental studies or interventions to examine the psychological benefits of mindfulness and self-compassion.Fourth, the present study involved a self-report survey, which could lead to common-method bias 69 .Hence, future studies should use a multi-method multi-informant approach to examine the constructs.Fifth, given that hours of meditation per week was skewed, it was ln-transformed for further analyses.As such, the meaning of this covariate was altered and should be interpreted with caution.Sixth, the current study had a wide range of participants, from new meditators with less than a month of practice to seasoned meditators with many years of practice.Although the inclusion of a range of participants could enhance generalizability, future studies should investigate the potential similarities or differences between new and long-term meditators.Seventh, meditation can take different forms, namely focused meditation, loving-kindness meditation, and mantra meditation 70 .To add specificity to the present findings, future studies should examine how different types of meditation is linked to the present variables under study.Eighth, although a sample of meditators were involved in this study, we did not examine the relations between people's involvement in meditation and the variables under study.Given that meditation is linked to self-compassion 71 and is common in mind wandering 72 , future studies should examine the effects of both dispositional mindfulness and meditation on long-term psychological functioning.Nineth, in this study, the MEWS 56 was used to assess participants' mind wandering.Even though the measure has been validated and used to assess mind wandering in healthy adults and non-clinical samples [73][74][75] , the MEWS was originally developed for adults with ADHD 56 .Although Mowlem et al. 57 indicated measurement invariance across individuals with or without ADHD diagnosis, future studies should utilize multiple measures 76 and different methods, such as naturalistic observation and probing methods 77 , to assess mind wandering.Tenth, the present study was not pre-registered.To demonstrate credibility, future studies should participate in open science and deposit the study designs and procedures in a repository.Given the above limitations, the findings must be interpreted with caution.

Conclusions
The present study lends initial support to self-compassion and grit as partial mediators between mindfulness and mind wandering among meditators.As an important take-home message, mindfulness is linked to greater compassion towards oneself, greater grit, and better disengagement from task-unrelated thoughts.Given that the present findings are cross-sectional and correlational, the processes through which mindfulness reduces mind wandering merit further longitudinal and experimental investigations.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Conceptual model of grit and self-compassion as mediators between mindfulness and mindwandering.
57e raw scores were then averaged, such that higher scores indicated greater grit.In this study, the Cronbach's alpha = 0.87 and McDonald's omega = 0.87 for this study.wanderingMindwandering in participants were assessed via the 15-item Mind excessively wandering scale (MEWS56).A sample item included, "I can only focus my thoughts on one thing at a time with considerable effort".Participants rated on a 4-point Likert scale from 0 (not at all or rarely) to 3 (nearly all of the time or constantly).Although the measure was initially developed for adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD56), Mowlem et al.57demonstrated measurement invariance between individuals with or without ADHD diagnosis.As such, it is valid for use among samples with or without ADHD.The raw scores were summed, such that higher summed scores indicated higher levels of mind wandering.In this study, the Cronbach's alpha = 0.94 and McDonald's omega = 0.95 for this study.